9 ms·

> they aren't regulating what you can have, they are regulating the minimum floor. This is utter nonsense on its face. If I have (or want) something under the

> they aren't regulating what you can have, they are regulating the minimum floor. This is utter nonsense on its face. If I have (or want) something under the minimum floor, they have regulated that away from me. They have regulated what I can have.

VladRussian2 13y ago
They also regulated away spoiled beef in stores, non smoke detectors equipped bedrooms and poisoned tap water. You can't have it. Minimum floor.
- RickHull 13y ago
  Indeed. I'm simply asking that we call a spade a spade.
- mrschwabe 13y ago
  Some municipalities mandate the addition of sodium fluoride in their public water systems. Sodium fluoride is a poison, so it's not necessarily accurate to claim they have 'regulated away' poisoned tap water.
  - Aloisius 13y ago
    No one drinking publicly fluoridated tap water in the US is coming even close to a toxic dose. You might as well call all caffeinated beverages toxic given the toxic dose of caffeine is 1/30th that of sodium fluoride.
    - aric 13y ago
      The difference is that said municipalities mandate that this toxic substance be added to people's water. With soda, people have more direct awareness and choice. With communal water, many people remain trusting and assuming. Meanwhile, there is no hard, double-blind science backing any clear benefits of fluoridation; yet the negatives keep growing. The EPA lowers their "recommended maximum" continually throughout the years, as pressure for sanity builds. Sane countries banned fluoridation long ago. Furthermore, the more it infects the food chain, the more "a little bit" adds up. It doesn't magically stay contained in tap water alone. Sure, it won't matter to most people, even not on principle alone. It will matter to some people, though, in compounding their chronic health problems. And that matters to me. Then there is ethics. Ethics and choice matter. Even if there were startling net benefits to this very toxic substance, using or ingesting it should be exclusively on an individual basis: personal choice, OTC, or per a physician. Advocating for needlessly and forcefully "medicating" (read: it's not medicine) other people through their communal water supply is, in no uncertain terms, blatantly unethical. It seems to stem from either psychopathy, greed, or sheer ignorance. It's on the same order as an industry and some physicians promoting nicotine cigarettes for health, once upon a time, and other such barbarities of an era.
      - maxerickson 13y ago
        Most things that are considered to be medicine are pretty toxic. It's the dose that makes them into medicine. Some of this is because to be a medicine, a substance sort of needs to have a noticeable effect on our biology.
        aric 13y ago
        I appreciate your comment. You caught my conventional language and prodded me. I should be more careful. Toxicity is a factor of everything in medical science involving substances. ...in life rather. Medicine of all various forms is vast, highly varying per person, often contradictory over time in understanding, and constantly evolving. Conventionally, I consider medicine to be [something that is beneficial down to the personal level]. I'll rephrase. It isn't good medicine. Fluoride treatments and water fluoridation are medicines like mercury treatment was once medicine. Explicit forms of "medication" must be relegated solely to an individual's active consent when consent is possible. That means a conscious choice to partake in the "medicine," on or in one's body, without medicating other people in the treatment. That's basic ethics. The benefit:negative ratio would have to be astronomically high to justify any less standard where medicine is concerned. Medicine is very personal. Speaking for myself, when an extremely toxic substance to humans, no matter the dose, is intentionally added to something as important as water and thus a food chain, it has already lost the ethical equation. Massively "medicating" passive "patients" through the water supply is just sad. Worse still, ingesting fluoride hasn't been justified on any beneficial, medical level -- and quite the opposite with negatives. Thus, it's hard for me to associate the term "medicine" with it. I completely concede to that point though.
      - pionar 13y ago
        Wow, I didn't know fluoride conspiracy theorists still existed. Thanks.
        aric 13y ago
        That's a snide dismissive. I encourage you to not be condescending to others for making statements against your preconceived notions. You may support ingesting fluoride for yourself, for whatever reason. I'd also encourage you to research it with a more skeptical and intellectual spirit, if only for the sake of your health. How you treat others and yourself is up to you, of course. Beyond your personal choices, you'll then have a titanic task of providing basis for your support of fluoride as a medicine to the point where you justify medicating the rest of your community through its water supply.
  - briandear 13y ago
    You aren't being forced at gunpoint by the IRS to drink tap water. You are free to buy whatever water you want. You are being forced to buy insurance. A very big difference.
    - VladRussian2 13y ago
      you're not forced to buy insurance. There is a new tax and you're just given a chance to avoid it by buying some specific product. For example i avoid some taxes by paying mortgage. Nobody forces me to have a mortgage or medical insurance. Either of it just reduces taxes and provides some benefits to me as perceived to me.
    - aric 13y ago
      They both use force. Putting heavily toxic, hard-to-remove substances into tap water -- as additives rather than as "necessary" treatments -- is, I would hope, an action considered aggressive and highly unethical to many people. Consider the degree to which people are now dependent on municipal water and the degree to which water is crucial to sustain life. I would call poisoning a water supply a form of force. It's physical and economic taxation, mostly hurting poor people (who can't afford proper filtration). And it's to the detriment of an entire food chain. Under the new health insurance law, the penalty for not buying health insurance is a fine. I forget the yearly amount: $500-1000 (depending)? Yes, that's a form of force. The amount of the fine and who it impacts is the amount of force. It's economic taxation. It also further opens up a slippery slope in the ability for such forms of force to be used increasingly in other aspects of government and society. That's another topic. Both propositions are easily argued as forms of force. They could easily be argued as unjustified compared to other systems and methods. However, for now, I'd argue that contaminating water is a larger form of force.
- Turing_Machine 13y ago
  Spoiled beef is quite a different thing from requiring a 60 year old man to buy maternity coverage.
  - toomuchtodo 13y ago
    You mean spreading the cost of maternity coverage across all policyholders. Perhaps you're not aware of how insurance works, spreading risk and all that jazz. Have healthcare system where costs are externalized? People complain. Have healthcare system where costs are internalized and properly accounted for? People complain.
    - Turing_Machine 13y ago
      1) You don't get to tell me what I "mean". 2) I'm quite aware of how insurance works. Please do share with us the probability of a 60 year old man becoming pregnant, then explain why that "risk" needs to be "spread".
      - ncarroll 13y ago
        I wonder what the probability of a 60 year old man getting his lovely partner pregnant might be? That looks like a reason for spreading risk to me.
        Turing_Machine 13y ago
        Given that the law also requires the lovely partner to have her own coverage, I think your "reason" is dubious at best.
        Turing_Machine 13y ago
        Also note that the law requires 60 year old women to buy maternity coverage. Is their lovely partner going to make them pregnant? Given that the Guinness record for the oldest natural conception is 59, I think not (there are a few cases of older women giving birth, but those all involved in vitro fertilization or the like). What other astoundingly unlikely events do you guys think people should be required to insure against? Meteor impact? Virgin birth? All the molecules of air rushing to one side of the room and suffocating you?

VladRussian2 13y ago

They also regulated away spoiled beef in stores, non smoke detectors equipped bedrooms and poisoned tap water. You can't have it. Minimum floor.

RickHull 13y ago
Indeed. I'm simply asking that we call a spade a spade.
mrschwabe 13y ago
Some municipalities mandate the addition of sodium fluoride in their public water systems. Sodium fluoride is a poison, so it's not necessarily accurate to claim they have 'regulated away' poisoned tap water.
- Aloisius 13y ago
  No one drinking publicly fluoridated tap water in the US is coming even close to a toxic dose. You might as well call all caffeinated beverages toxic given the toxic dose of caffeine is 1/30th that of sodium fluoride.
  - aric 13y ago
    The difference is that said municipalities mandate that this toxic substance be added to people's water. With soda, people have more direct awareness and choice. With communal water, many people remain trusting and assuming. Meanwhile, there is no hard, double-blind science backing any clear benefits of fluoridation; yet the negatives keep growing. The EPA lowers their "recommended maximum" continually throughout the years, as pressure for sanity builds. Sane countries banned fluoridation long ago. Furthermore, the more it infects the food chain, the more "a little bit" adds up. It doesn't magically stay contained in tap water alone. Sure, it won't matter to most people, even not on principle alone. It will matter to some people, though, in compounding their chronic health problems. And that matters to me. Then there is ethics. Ethics and choice matter. Even if there were startling net benefits to this very toxic substance, using or ingesting it should be exclusively on an individual basis: personal choice, OTC, or per a physician. Advocating for needlessly and forcefully "medicating" (read: it's not medicine) other people through their communal water supply is, in no uncertain terms, blatantly unethical. It seems to stem from either psychopathy, greed, or sheer ignorance. It's on the same order as an industry and some physicians promoting nicotine cigarettes for health, once upon a time, and other such barbarities of an era.
    - maxerickson 13y ago
      Most things that are considered to be medicine are pretty toxic. It's the dose that makes them into medicine. Some of this is because to be a medicine, a substance sort of needs to have a noticeable effect on our biology.
      - aric 13y ago
        I appreciate your comment. You caught my conventional language and prodded me. I should be more careful. Toxicity is a factor of everything in medical science involving substances. ...in life rather. Medicine of all various forms is vast, highly varying per person, often contradictory over time in understanding, and constantly evolving. Conventionally, I consider medicine to be [something that is beneficial down to the personal level]. I'll rephrase. It isn't good medicine. Fluoride treatments and water fluoridation are medicines like mercury treatment was once medicine. Explicit forms of "medication" must be relegated solely to an individual's active consent when consent is possible. That means a conscious choice to partake in the "medicine," on or in one's body, without medicating other people in the treatment. That's basic ethics. The benefit:negative ratio would have to be astronomically high to justify any less standard where medicine is concerned. Medicine is very personal. Speaking for myself, when an extremely toxic substance to humans, no matter the dose, is intentionally added to something as important as water and thus a food chain, it has already lost the ethical equation. Massively "medicating" passive "patients" through the water supply is just sad. Worse still, ingesting fluoride hasn't been justified on any beneficial, medical level -- and quite the opposite with negatives. Thus, it's hard for me to associate the term "medicine" with it. I completely concede to that point though.
    - pionar 13y ago
      Wow, I didn't know fluoride conspiracy theorists still existed. Thanks.
      - aric 13y ago
        That's a snide dismissive. I encourage you to not be condescending to others for making statements against your preconceived notions. You may support ingesting fluoride for yourself, for whatever reason. I'd also encourage you to research it with a more skeptical and intellectual spirit, if only for the sake of your health. How you treat others and yourself is up to you, of course. Beyond your personal choices, you'll then have a titanic task of providing basis for your support of fluoride as a medicine to the point where you justify medicating the rest of your community through its water supply.
- briandear 13y ago
  You aren't being forced at gunpoint by the IRS to drink tap water. You are free to buy whatever water you want. You are being forced to buy insurance. A very big difference.
  - VladRussian2 13y ago
    you're not forced to buy insurance. There is a new tax and you're just given a chance to avoid it by buying some specific product. For example i avoid some taxes by paying mortgage. Nobody forces me to have a mortgage or medical insurance. Either of it just reduces taxes and provides some benefits to me as perceived to me.
  - aric 13y ago
    They both use force. Putting heavily toxic, hard-to-remove substances into tap water -- as additives rather than as "necessary" treatments -- is, I would hope, an action considered aggressive and highly unethical to many people. Consider the degree to which people are now dependent on municipal water and the degree to which water is crucial to sustain life. I would call poisoning a water supply a form of force. It's physical and economic taxation, mostly hurting poor people (who can't afford proper filtration). And it's to the detriment of an entire food chain. Under the new health insurance law, the penalty for not buying health insurance is a fine. I forget the yearly amount: $500-1000 (depending)? Yes, that's a form of force. The amount of the fine and who it impacts is the amount of force. It's economic taxation. It also further opens up a slippery slope in the ability for such forms of force to be used increasingly in other aspects of government and society. That's another topic. Both propositions are easily argued as forms of force. They could easily be argued as unjustified compared to other systems and methods. However, for now, I'd argue that contaminating water is a larger form of force.
Turing_Machine 13y ago
Spoiled beef is quite a different thing from requiring a 60 year old man to buy maternity coverage.
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  You mean spreading the cost of maternity coverage across all policyholders. Perhaps you're not aware of how insurance works, spreading risk and all that jazz. Have healthcare system where costs are externalized? People complain. Have healthcare system where costs are internalized and properly accounted for? People complain.
  - Turing_Machine 13y ago
    1) You don't get to tell me what I "mean". 2) I'm quite aware of how insurance works. Please do share with us the probability of a 60 year old man becoming pregnant, then explain why that "risk" needs to be "spread".
    - ncarroll 13y ago
      I wonder what the probability of a 60 year old man getting his lovely partner pregnant might be? That looks like a reason for spreading risk to me.
      - Turing_Machine 13y ago
        Given that the law also requires the lovely partner to have her own coverage, I think your "reason" is dubious at best.
        Turing_Machine 13y ago
        Also note that the law requires 60 year old women to buy maternity coverage. Is their lovely partner going to make them pregnant? Given that the Guinness record for the oldest natural conception is 59, I think not (there are a few cases of older women giving birth, but those all involved in vitro fertilization or the like). What other astoundingly unlikely events do you guys think people should be required to insure against? Meteor impact? Virgin birth? All the molecules of air rushing to one side of the room and suffocating you?